When you first meet him, Colby Glaspie is as soft-spoken as they come. It’s not because he doesn’t have anything to say. He just doesn’t always know how to say it.

The 16-year-old James Madison High School student from southern Dallas lives with his grandmother right around from a corner store where drug dealers and homeless people camp out. His extensive vocabulary gets him bullied in school.

He turns to writing to help him vent. Putting his feelings onto paper helps him channel his emotions. “I hold so much in," he said, "that I don’t even know how much I hold in."

Now he is sharing his writing and poetry through the Artivism project, organized by Big Thought, a local youth development nonprofit. The project gives young people in Dallas a way to explore and reflect on social and racial justice issues.

The first installment of Artivism is a mural dominated by the image of a person screaming with the Dallas skyline glowing in the background. On the backside of the mural are photos of students and other young people. The mural made its debut at the Dallas Festival of Ideas last April.

Over the past few months, the students did spoken-word performances and recorded more than 50 pieces of poetry. The mural includes a set of QR codes that you can scan with your smartphone in order to hear the recordings.

The idea for the project came from youth development manager Allison Caldwell. She said Big Thought had been developing social and emotional skill-building curriculum for a number of years. But during that time, Big Thought wanted to help the students use those skills. The Artivism program is the result of a couple of years of planning to find a solution to that problem.

Caldwell said the goal was to give kids a platform to speak on social and racial justice issues. She was expecting the students to bring up about two to three topics. But the kids went beyond her expectations, touching on everything from race to bullying to food deserts.

“Adults that were engaging with the mural at its premiere at the Festival of Ideas didn’t realize how much teenagers had to say about so many different topics that are often perceived as really mature, high-level [issues],” she said.

For example, Glaspie’s piece, titled "The Dot," is about the history of slavery, segregation and integration. In the piece, he describes the image of a black dot on a white canvas. The black dot represents black people in America, which is represented by a white background. As his poem progresses, the canvas changes from pure white to multicolored to represent a more diverse country.

Vertiz Wood, 19, read his poetry for a Big Thought mural in Dallas on June 16.

(Nathan Hunsinger/Staff Photographer)

Colby Glaspie, 16, read his poetry for a Big Thought mural in Dallas on June 16.

(Nathan Hunsinger/Staff Photographer)

Dejahn Carr, 18, read his poetry for a Big Thought mural in Dallas on June 16.

(Nathan Hunsinger/Staff Photographer)

Frankie Zuniga, 21, is a student at El Centro College. His piece, "I Wish," is about the pressure that people feel to be something they’re not. It’s also the only piece recorded in Spanish. “People wish they were popular, wish they were cool, wish someone knew who they were, wish all this,” he said. “Instead, you should wish to be yourself rather than someone you’re not.”

Vertiz Wood, 19, isn’t in college yet but wants to go to Stephen F. Austin State University. He wrote an untitled piece about the state of politics even though he usually writes about more personal topics. It’s a satirical piece centered around April Fools' Day that tackles how people can be constantly divided even though the world is more connected than ever.

Wood and Glaspie know firsthand the strain the city has experienced over the past year. Last year, on July 7, they were with others at a spoken-word event organized by DaVerse Lounge, a program that Big Thought sponsors at Life in Deep Ellum, a community center.

The group members started noticing a large number of police officers heading toward the downtown area after their performance finished in Deep Ellum that night. Wood said an eerie silence crept over the group as news spread of the shooting at a protest that took five police officers’ lives.

“We were over there, everybody’s sharing their story, everybody’s trying to build something up,” Wood said. “We were completely oblivious to it at the same time right across downtown this was happening, and it’s just a crazy thing.”

Wood said he thinks the Artivism mural and the recorded poems will help people understand and work through the roots of the problem that led to the shooting. “All it takes is for one person to tell something about [themselves],” he said. “And even if the other person doesn’t respond or say anything at all, there’s a connection there now.”

The mural was exhibited at Love Field on Saturday. Big Thought plans to exhibit it this summer at several different locations, including the Red Bird Mall. The organization is looking for a permanent home for the piece. The second phase of the Artivism project will be an original musical about social or racial justice issues that members will put on this fall.

Glaspie said if he had not found Big Thought or gone through therapy, he would probably "end up a grown man being very angry and not really getting anywhere in life, no matter how talented I am.”

Now Glaspie, who plans to audition for the performance phase of Artivism, believes people who see the project’s work will understand that they’re not alone in their struggles. Even if they don’t always know how to express themselves.

“They’ll realize, ‘Wow, I remember this from somewhere and I know that I’m not the only one,’ " Glaspie said. “And that helps with a lot of things. It helps with yourself, it helps with you getting along with others.”

AT A GLANCE

The Artivism mural will be on display at the Dallas City of Learning Turn Up! event, located in the Frontiers of Flight Museum at Love Field. The event, free to the public, will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, June 24. The mural will be in the middle of the first floor at the center of all the exhibitions. For more information, visit bigthought.org.